Twitter vs twitter: Can we discuss the new Twitter policy using twitter?

Twitter has introduced a new policy allowing the possibility of filtering tweets at the request of local governments. This major departure in policy has triggered an avalanche of tweet-style protests.

‘It is a supercomplex issue’, complained Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo in a recent interview. He continued: ‘When the news came out, people tried to distil it down to ‘What did they just say?’ It’s easy to distil it down to ‘Twitter is endorsing XYZ.’ He pleads for time and for academics to study it properly. According to Costolo, this will justify the evaluation that the new Twitter policy is forward-looking. For the CEO of a company that has promoted prompt, knee-jerk responses, the plea for well-thought out and inclusive responses sounds contradictory. Is it? Is the genie out of the bottle (Twitter-style communication)?

What is your view? Is Twitter just another communication megaphone (dissemination)? Have you discovered any alternative way of using Twitter (as Jovan did with conference reporting)?

Can we actually converse meaningfully on Twitter? Do you have examples? What are the limits of using Twitter in diplomacy? Contrary to the view of Twitter’s CEO, can we discuss this ‘supercomplex’ issue on Twitter?

SENNETT, in his latest book, makes the distinction between DIALECTIC and DIALOGIC discourse.
The first homes in toward a conclusion.
The second aims to enlarge the scope of the common reflection and stimulate creativity.

It is a dialogic exchange that we are after, not counting heads or “talking heads”

Jovan: ‘Can we actually converse meaningfully on Twitter? Do you have examples? ‘

That depends on what you mean by meaningful, I guess, and goes back to your issue of context. Maracay (#Maracay), Venezuela is my tiny centre of the universe. If my son is running behind the clock on the way to important meeting, and hits a traffic jam on the Central Regional Freeway (#ARC), he SMSs me from his car to my computer, I check Twitter, and sms back what the problem is. And that is because we are low tech, and he doesn’t tweet, much less while he is driving.

Is getting emergency vehicles to a water landing on the Hudson River 15 minutes earlier ‘meaningful’? I guess it depends whether or not you are the person standing on the airplane wing in the water.

If a pithy tweet on a topic that is important to me–ACTA, SOPA, freedom or love–triggers me to act, then it it meaningful. Aldo’s quote ‘The best twitter is MUNCH’s: Scream with a smiley added for disambiguation’ IS a tweet, and a wonderful, stimulating one at that–meaningful, even, because I have been smiling about it since I read it. Who adds the nuance, Aldo? the speaker/writer or the listener/reader? Is ‘I love you’ less nuanced because of the medium? Depends on who receives it and what it means to them. The medium is not the nuance. The message is the nuance.

Tweets are like sparks: they can be pretty and childishly simple, or start fires.

lovely that you get involved!
I’ll try some more “lateral pictures” in my blogs – just to make you laugh.

I was at the doctor’s this morning, and in the 3 minutes I waited I went again through Th. ZELDIN’s book on Conversation.

He pointed out that there are various ways for a man to speak to a woman (and viceversa):
(a) to woo
(b) to flirt
(c) to court
(d) to “make love” that splendid expression we have disambiguated to the sexual

ZELDIN was proposing to create a few ones

Now how can you tweet these nuances?

If the tweet is about: “I’m late”, it does not matter, but if it is “I’late to our meeting at the beach overlooking the sunset, please hold the sun” you are already over quota with words…